More Probiotics Means Less Weight

Probiotics have often been pushed by the big marketing companies as they put the stuff in their yogurts and other dairy products. Many dietitians also claim that the addition of supplemental probiotics to yogurt has many health benefits including digestive health, general well being, and can also raise a person’s immunity to certain diseases as well as an increase in the immune system’s overall function.

The only problem with these claims has been that there wasn’t all that much research done on them and there was really no solid proof as to their real benefits. That is until now anyway.

A team of researchers and doctors from a specialized research team at the Department of Cardiology from the Taizhou People’s Hospital in Taizhou China did a study on probiotics and their results were quite positive.

There were a series of 25 completely randomized tests done for a series of several weeks that involved over 1,900 people and the findings show that probiotics are indeed quite healthy. To be clear their research set out to see how the daily ingestion of probiotics would affect the body in terms of weight and the body’s BMI or Body Mass Index, which is pretty much the ratio of fat on the human body.

The study was conclusive in a positive way and it was revealed that the daily consumption of probiotics directly lead to a fair amount of weight loss as well as the body’s BMI. The probiotics actually had the greatest effect on overweight and obese adults.

The lead author and contributor to the study is a Chinese doctor named Qingqing Zhang and he stated that in the past several years there have been several studies performed on probiotics and their relation to weight loss and BMI. The problem was that although these studies did show some positive results, the overall weight loss and decrease in BMI was not widespread. However these studies have been very small and as is the case with all trial and medical studies, there may have been some error involved.

The good thing is that Zhang’s study was actually quite conclusive in the finding that probiotics really did help lose weight and lower BMI. To be clear the effects on weight loss and BMI from the daily consumption of probiotics was minimal and weight loss was quite small.

What can be taken from the study though is that the vast majority of the 1,900 people put through the probiotics trial all lost weight. It wasn’t much weight, but nonetheless a very high percentage of people had a lower BMI and a lower weight after the trial was done.

Of course even just a little bit of weight loss and a lower level of fat on the body have great health benefits for everybody. Lower body weight can help with weight related diseases such as high blood pressure, Type 2 Diabetes, and other conditions related to being overweight. The moral of the story here is that if you aren’t eating enough probiotics yet you should probably get started.